How to reduce event registration form abandonment
Registration form abandonment can hit your events where it hurts. Here’s why and some tips to avoid it.
From the event organiser’s perspective…
Let’s face it, for an event organiser, fewer things are more frustrating than getting a load of form abandonments especially if they could be avoided. It’s not a nice thing to have to report back in either.
According to Convertica, 27% of people abandon online forms because of their length, and 10% drop off because of unnecessary questions.
The biggest stat of all is that 70% sail off into the sunset and never return if they encounter an issue with the form.
What happens if your event is undersubscribed and one of the main reasons is a dodgy reg
From the attendee’s perspective…
“Too much hassle”, “I’ll do this later” or words to that effect are what goes through the mind of someone interested in registering but faced with a conference registration form full of tedious questions that make it as burdensome as Mariah Carey’s tour rider.
First impressions do count and if a long, irrelevant registration form is their first experience with the event then it’s not a good one.
A form with a technical issue should never get to the stage where it’s in front of the person registering. Testing avoids that or if there is some sort of technical issue, good messaging will help.
A possible solution?
Groundbreaking stuff is this! How about making the form short and sweet and only collecting the information you really need at the point of registration?
Then once they have registered and are “in” why don’t you go back to them with some follow-up questions that are relevant to them?
Another option is to create a registration form that only shows questions relevant to the person filling it out. They’ll never see the questions that aren’t relevant to them, so they’ll never have the opportunity to get frustrated by a long, dull, and irrelevant registration form.
You already know this, but it’s worth pointing out as time is normally a scarce resource for event organisers, make sure the whole registration process including the form is tested properly. That’s all permutations and all elements before you sign it off.
To conclude, take a step into the world of the person registering. Would you want to see a long form? What would you think if it was irrelevant in parts or didn’t work properly? We’ve all experienced this at some point and we all think we could probably do it better. Now’s your chance!
Event registration for internal events
Internal events often throw up different challenges when it comes to registration. Here’s some of the things to look out for along with potential solutions.
If you run internal company events, you'll probably be well versed in some of the unique challenges of event registration and comms that come with them.
A few questions that need answering
How do I send the invitations?
How do I make sure that it's only employees registering?
How do I make sure the registration site and emails are on brand?
Invitations
If the event platform that you're using to create the registration site has the option to send personalised email invitations, that's probably the easiest option. To throw in a curveball, what if the IT police don't want you using another external system to send emails from?
Need some options?
1. Send them out via the events platform if you're allowed;
2. Send them out via your email marketing platform;
3. Send them out via your local email client (Gmail, Outlook, etc) using a merge function.
We've already mentioned option 1 is the easiest, but it's all down to your friends in the IT team.
Options 1 and 2 present another issue, how do you get the personalised links from the event platform into the email marketing platform/local email client? Unless there's an option to bulk export the invitation links from the event platform, you're in for a long day (or days depending on how many employees there are) exporting the links one by one. Check with your provider to see if this is an option.
Employees only
How do you make sure the only people registering are employees? It’s difficult because there is nothing to stop an employee from sharing their unused invitation with someone from outside the business, but there are some things you can do.
1. Make registration accessible via a secure login for each invitee;
2. Mark the event as private which can only be accessed via a unique invitation link that expires once used;
3. Restrict the domain(s) used in the email field to company ones only;
4. Only allow email addresses that are in the database;
5. Make the first name and last name fields view only.
It’s worth noting that the above are only options if your event software has that functionality.
Keep it on-brand
“On-brand”, it’s a widely used term. What we mean is that it looks like all your other company marketing stuff. Website, social media, print, etc.
If that’s not important to you, there’s a number of platforms that you could use such as Eventbrite.
If it is important but you don’t have the time or budget (could be both) to engage with a web designer, make sure your current event platform has at least the following:
1. The option to use a custom domain/sub-domain (e.g. yourcoevents.com), for both the event registration site and the email comms.
2. The ability to add your logo, colours, fonts and footers as a minimum.
Are you using a registration platform that has developed functionality specifically to cater to these types of events?
If the answer is yes, then it sounds like you're covered.
If the answer is no, we might be able to help and it’s a simple next step, send an email to hello@mitingu.com or fill out the enquiry form.
Post-event communications, yes or no?
Is your event communications schedule all about before and during the event? What about after the event? Post-event communications - are they a yes or a no?
Let’s face it, the tendency is to focus on good communications before the event and during it. There's a valid argument for this, before the event we need to get people excited and keep them informed to make sure they show up. On the day itself, communications are a great way of keeping attendees updated.
Post-event comms are a bit like the poor relation that can be either completely ignored or done as a bit of an afterthought.
Just because the excitement of the build-up and the actual event has passed, it doesn't mean the opportunity to keep the conversation going should be missed. Sending surveys, thank you emails, highlight reels, popular slide decks are all decent examples of post-event comms.
Surveys
An effective way of getting honest feedback (especially if you let the respondent answer anonymously). Make them short and snappy - people like quick response options like check boxes, radio buttons and dropdowns. Try and keep free text fields to a minimum, perhaps just a comments box at the end of the survey.
Send them out 24-48 hours after the event whilst it's still fresh in their minds.
If you've got the budget something like a prize draw is a good way to encourage attendees to respond.
If you're sending out surveys, the key thing is to have an easy mechanism to view and download responses. Don't ignore the results, act on them and share the key points.
Thank you email
A simple "thanks for attending" email is an easy way to acknowledge and thank people for coming to the event. Make it more relevant to the individual if you can, a bit more than just their name if you can.
It could be used as a standalone email, include a link to take the post-event survey (see above), or an attachment/link to the highlights reel.
Highlight reels
Most of us haven't got time to watch a 60-minute film of an event we attended, no matter how good it was. Most of us can find the time to watch a condensed summary of the event if it's about 5 minutes or so. It's also something that can easily be shared and used to promote the next event.
Promoting future events
A good time to get early bookings for upcoming events is straight after the last one. We're taking it as read that this applies to attendees who got something positive out of the last event.
Neglecting post-event comms, might mean you’re missing out on an opportunity to differentiate your events from the rest.
6 reasons to make business events accountable
Why we think it's essential to make your business events accountable
Making events an accountable part of the sales cycle and culture has always been an issue for businesses. Believing any opportunity to meet customers or partners face-to-face, or bring employees together at a corporate event has always ‘felt’ like the correct thing to do. Time and time again budget holders were left questioning and unable to answer what the return was. The set up, management, delivery and measurement so often fell short of being properly planned and integrated into wider internal and external customer sales and experience strategies. But that is all changing.
There is now a growing recognition and a desire amongst corporate event managers and other lines of business (sales, marketing, procurement, finance, HR teams etc.) to be much smarter in the way that events are run, and how they can prove accountability to the business. Here’s why:
Businesses need to differentiate to win. Real world face-to-face interactions (via your events) allow these points of differentiation to be delivered, experienced, captured and capitalised upon.
Events can contribute significantly to the overall experience and perception customers, partners and employees have of your brand. By being joined up with business and sales objectives events become an integral part of their company’s purpose and accelerate opportunity and belief.
Without a strategy you're committed to and a plan to deliver against it, you are vulnerable. Knowing why, how and when you need to run an event will ensure it provides and delivers value to all.
The customer is at the heart of everything. Successful events are not run by a siloed department. They are an integral part of the sales cycle and experience process. The face-to-face opportunity events provide has relevance to every part of your business.
First class experience is expected as default. Providing a personalised experience to each delegate individually from the very first communication is paramount. The more you can demonstrate you understand their needs and preferences, the more relevant you will be to them and the greater their desire to engage and attend. You can also serve them better too.
Technology is an enabler. The right event management platform will enable your business to set-up and deploy an event in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost by anyone, at any time, anywhere in the world. Intuitive to use, aligning to your brand for a seamless look and feel and providing relevant data and insight to enable you to deliver a great delegate experience on any device, pre event, during the event and post event, should be the basic criteria.
By aligning to business strategy, applying good planning skills, integrating with other business activities and colleagues and using the right technology tools and applications, any event can now feed both the attendee and the business with richer and more valuable experiences and outcomes. All of which can be measured and reported more accurately and effectively than ever before.
Tool up to win
Event managers that have a good understanding of their organization’s purpose and strategy will be better placed to make lasting and valuable contributions to the sales and experience effort and ensure all future events are correctly funded and attended.
Choosing and using the right event management technology to bring it all together, attract the right delegates and remove the uncertainty of event accountability is time worth investing. A simple gap analysis of how you currently run events versus how you must plan and run events in the future is a critical first step. With that knowledge, there is only ever likely to be a limited number of event management platforms and applications capable of meeting your needs. We understand that and this is why we built Mitingu.